Last Month(ish)

· My Dad was in the hospital for nine days with a bleeding ulcer. Again. After nine units of blood, two throat scopes, a colonoscopy, a radioactive bleeding scan, an ultrasound, pissing off his girlfriend, thinking he was going to die, and 4,972 blood draws, he got to come home from the ICU.  He’s fine now, but he’s done something to his hip and had to have an MRI last week. He’s falling apart I think.

· Maddie went back to the pulmonologist for her follow up appointment. If you remember, she gets pneumonia frequently and easily. She had to do a swallow test, where they make her drink varying thicknesses of barium liquid and take X-Rays as she swallows. This is to see where that liquid ends up; is it going straight to her stomach, or is it going towards her lungs, or into her lungs? Her tests showed that the liquid is getting to her vocal cords. It’s why she always has a raspy voice, and gurgles and snores at night, it’s why the gunk in her sinuses and nose got into her lungs and gave her pneumonia three times last winter.  Normally children outgrow this, so I suspect that it was much worse when she was younger and that’s why she kept getting sick. It also means that we have to thicken any liquid that passes her lips - anything that will become liquid in her mouth, or that has an overabundance of water in it that will be released when she chews it has to be thickened, including medicine. The stuff you use to do this is not covered by insurance and is not exactly the cheapest stuff on the planet (of course!).  There will be no spontaneous trips to Sonic for Maddie. No sips from the water bottle, no popsicles or ice cream, no watermelon or grapes (how do you thicken a grape?). I have to make her cups for the whole day at day care and we can’t go anywhere without something to drink for her already made up. I know it’s not like she has some genetic disorder, or a life threatening illness. I know. That doesn’t make it any less soul crushing to realize that we’ll have to be extra viligent about everything she ingests until she outgrows this. She goes back in February to have the tests run again.

·  Maddie also has the distinction of having the worst case of eczema that the afterhours clinic had ever seen.  She was covered in it, and we could not stay ahead of it. The doctor who saw her even brought in someone else for a second opinion to make sure that’s all it really was. It took about a week, but we finally got rid of the worst of it, but if we miss even one day of slathering her up with hydrocortisone, it starts creeping back.  We’ve run out of the prescription cream and the rash is taking  over again. The doctor also tried to tell us that she had scabies. When I asked where she might pick up such a thing, he said “day care” in the same way one would say “a dirt floor whore house built on a garbage dump full of dead bodies and used needles.” It wasn’t scabies. Her spots of eczema just travel all over and set up new little colonies. You can see some of it on her face in her Halloween picture. We are going to have to go into the pediatrician's office - a giant hotbed of sickness - for it again.

· Hudson convinced me that he put a rock in his ear. One Friday afternoon, he kept ignoring me or saying, “What?” every time I would finally catch his attention and talk to him. It was so infuriating. So when Tim got home and he was still doing it to Tim, I asked him if he put something in his ear while he was at school. He said yes, and when asked what it was, he said it was a rock. I put him up on the counter and peered into his ear. I saw something blue in there, so we headed off to the ER. One Hundred dollars later, the doctor found Hudson’s little ear tube, which had naturally fallen out of his eardrum, in his ear canal. It’s blue. 

·     Then I got strep throat.

· My job is going awesome (as far as I know. Once you get yourself fired, you’re paranoid at work forever). It’s always slow this time of year. October 15^th has come and gone, and it’s not quite time for projections yet. And me without a vacation day in sight!

·  Tim’s job is also rocking with the awesome since they finally got their project completed at the end of September. A few all nighters and some middle of the night phone calls, and they are rolling right along.  They had their company picnic this weekend and I won $25 to Chili’s on the second game of Bingo. I should have picked the Lands End one and gotten myself a new pair of house shoes, but I thought of our family first. And our tummies.

·    We've been to Boo at the Zoo, eaten breakfast at Stoby's in Russellville to eat in the train car, we've gone to football games, had a huge crab leg and shrimp boil with my Dad's entire family and generally run around until we are all ready for some down time.

Back tomorrow with something I finally finished.

 

Comments

[Amy W]

Craziness in your house!!

[Boulder]

I don't know if this is helpful, or "ass"vice, but I remember reading something this spring about a study that showed bleach in bath water seemed to help kids with eczema.

Here's a link I found: http://tinyurl.com/crx7n6

Feel free to hit delete if it is in the latter category & not the former. :)

[Krista]

Glad the new job is going well. Poor Maddie. Hope she grows out of the fluid thing and the excema soon. I had excema until I hit puberty. My arms used to bleed they would get so bad. After the steriod cream healed the rashes, I found using an unscented lotion with colloidal oatmeal helped soothe my skin and seemed to keep it from coming back as often - at least for me.

[cagey]

Ugh. We dealt (and are still) with some skin issues with the kids. In our case, we noticed a seasonal aspect to it, so it seems that Arun is really sensitive to grass and such. Awesome! For a kid who is constantly in and out and in and out of the house.

Anyway, there's some more assvice for you, keep an eye out for a seasonal aspect.

Damn, sorry you are going through all of this right now - hopefully it calms down so you can enjoy the holidays coming! Hang in there. :-)

[Debbie]

Sorry about everything you're going through with Maddie.

Ryan has excema...I had never seen it before until we had it diagnosed this past summer. It's such a pain trying to figure out what triggers it (I think we've about given up) and keep it under control. I hope it gets easier for you!

[SJ]

Wow, I think you may very well have given me a run for my money! Just wait until you hear how my last several weeks have gone...

I mean WHEN I FINALLY BLOG AGAIN.

[Brian]

Just so you know, Kelly, I follow you through Google reader and your post came up in greek. Actually, the 4th and 5th bullet point didn't. I have NO idea why, but I thought I'd let you know.

Family life with kids is just crazy, is it not?